News Conference in ITAR-TASS "SU Domain:
New Status and Prospects"

At the end of June 2008 Maintenance Agency for
Registered Codes of the International Standardization
Organization Countries (Committee ISO3166/MA) made
a decision to transfer SU code to the category of
exclusively reserved ones. It has been announced
today by Veni Markovsky - ICANN representative in
Russia and CIS, who was making a speech at the news
conference in ITAR-TASS. The news conference was
also attended by Galina Soldatova - Director of
Internet Development Fund; Vladimir Molchanov -
Deputy Director of Internet Development Fund;
Alexey Platonov - Director of RIPN - SU Domain
Technical Center. Timur Aitov - senior advisor
of ITAR-TASS was a conference speaker.

SU domain administration extended gratitude to
ICANN for the assistance in rendering constructive
negotiations with the International Standardization
Organization as regards SU code transfer to the
category of exclusively reserved ones. Such
decision-making allowed settling the main controversy
related to domain existence. We shall remind that
to-date SU code was classified as temporarily reserved
for the transfer period. Committee ISO3166/MA made
a specific decision to fix temporary reserve period
with further re-use of the code - 50 years to allow
re-using of both SU code and domain up to 2042. The
decision adopted by the International Standardization
Organization enables to cancel all time restrictions
regarding SU code and domain existence.

The full text of the joint decision of Internet
Development Fund and ICANN on decision-making of
Committee ISO3166/MA was announced today at the news
conference and published
on domains information resource pages info.nic.ru.
It particularly quotes: "This decision serves an outcome
of the constructive dialogue between Internet Development
Fund and ICANN. ICANN played its positive role in settling
dispute on SU domain by clear expression of its stance and
taking actions within their competence. Eventually,
all parties positively settled the problem in favor
of Internet stability and security with accommodation
of SU domain users' interests".

RIPN is an official IANA
national two-digit domain base
SU domain registrant
up to date, de-facto SU domain is under control of Internet
Development Fund, following the
Memorandum of Understanding
signed by RIPN and
Internet Development Fund as of January 20, 2001.
In relation to "SU Domain Support and Development Agreement"
signed September 19, 2007, Alexey Platonov stressed that RIPN
will shortly delegate the registrant's functions to the Fund,
keeping SU Domain Technical Center reserved. Alexey Platonov
qualified the talks disseminated in media on association of
SU domain to Soviet days, due to a number of actions oriented
at full-scale development of SU domain, as "a sheer nonsense":
"SU domain was never related to official USSR, neither was
it "bureaucratized", furthermore, this particular domain
paved democratic way for our country. SU is certainly far
from national Russian domain, nevertheless it is a territorial,
more like a Eurasian domain, covering all CIA countries".

According to Internet Development Fund representatives,
foreign registrars will shortly gain access to registration
of SU domains. Vladimir Molchanov has an opinion that keen
interest to this domain will persist. Though, it is quite
a compact area (slightly exceeding 70 th. registered Secondary
level domains), SU has gathered around a stable society,
making all prerequisites for SU domain further dynamic
growth. By the way, the news conference addressed
background
report
prepared by RU-CENTER with SU domain development details.
RU-CENTER experts estimated that Internet users address
SU domain sites more than 50 mln. times a day.

"SU Domain Development is a Part of Russia's Contemporary
History", - resumed by Galina Soldatova. In slightly
more than a month SU domain will gain its full maturity
status, and it is noteworthy that domain age corresponds
to that of Russia's contemporary civil society that has
no more fear of historical background associated with
the domain name, but competently and efficiently uses
historical heritage in routine life.